David Koma / Fall 2011 RTW

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He might only be 25 years old and hail from Georgia (as in the neighbor to Russia, not the state of feuding Atlanta housewives), but David Koma is proving himself a pretty adept assimilator of references and influences to create something that is entirely of his own making. For fall, he was variously looking at: Leigh Bowery (the gigantic spots—the leitmotif of the season—strategically placed furry pom-poms, and enormous multicolored fur collar worn with the closing look are just the kinds of things Bowery would have worn without as much as a stitch else), Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (she too knows her way around a circle print), and, as always, the sculpted and honed silhouettes of Azzedine Alaia. Though it would seem Thierry Mugler might have also been pinned on his mental mood board, if those hourglass jackets with fox fur peplums and the manipulated dot print that followed the curves of the body were anything to go by. But—and this is what marks Koma as an interesting new talent, beyond the finish of his clothes, which was exquisite—he could then work in photographic images of Russian nuns that were taken by a friend of his, and make them look coolly beautiful, and not a kitsch joke. Given his inspirational sources, it would have all been too easy for the collection to have gone there, but it didn’t. And he made a strong case for the stricter, sexier, more controlled silhouette that is slowly emerging as the counterpoint to all the looser, easier seventies vibe that has been at large, quite literally, in New York and London.